Jam Master Jay initially smiled at the man who fatally shot him

A woman who was working as director of operations for Jam Master Jay's record label at the time of his death, gave emotional testimony at the Brooklyn trial of the two men charged with his 2002 murder.

Lydia High cried and stopped frequently to gather herself Monday as she told the jury how she had originally planned a quick visit to the recording studio where Run-DMC's DJ, whose legal name is Jason Mizell, worked. It was October 30, 2002, and he was leaving for a Run-DMC tour the next day. However, before he could leave, he had to sign papers, signing a new artist to his label. As soon as he got his support, he would go to dinner.

A trip to the studio in Jamaica, Queens, was unusual for High, who wears glasses and wore her shoulder-length hair in court. He usually worked in the Manhattan office of JMJ Records, which was then an imprint of Def Jam. She told the jury that she disliked going to the studio because of the “clubhouse” atmosphere and how it felt like a generally unprofessional working environment. However, it arrived around 7:00 or 7:15. Mizell was killed at 7:30. High is one of only two known eyewitnesses to the shooting.

“I first saw Jay and Tony sitting there on the couch,” she told jurors, referring to Uriel “Tony” Rincon, who testified last week that he was shot in the leg during the incident. Once inside, he noticed Mizell's gun next to him on the couch and remembered scolding him, “Why do you have that there? I don't like guns.” His reply was simply, “Don't worry about it. Let's do what we have to do.” (Last week, another witness, Stephon Watford, told jurors that Mizell had started carrying a gun in the days before the murder. Watford said that at the time, Mizell “was nervous about something.”)

High was placed on a couch across from Mizell and Rincon, who were playing video games, and Mizell stopped to sign all the paperwork. Then, he said, someone entered the studio. This person walked up to the DJ and greeted him. “Jason smiled,” she said. “[Mizell] picked up and gave the person a pound.' High slowed her speech: “And then she said, 'Oh, shit.'”

High heard the gunshot that killed Mizell, but doesn't remember seeing the gun. “I jumped up and ran for the door,” he told jurors. “I got to the door and the person standing there told me to get down on the ground. It was Tinard,” she said, referring to a nickname for defendant Ronald Washington. “[He had] a weapon.”

“Was he showing you?” asked prosecutor Artie McConnell. “Yes,” she said.

Sometime after she got on the floor, she remembered two people jumping over her and running towards the door. He ran into Mizell. During the testimony, High was crying too much to tell jurors what condition she found him in.

High testified that she had known Washington “for years,” adding that she had “no problem recognizing his face.” All she could see of the man who shot Mizell was that he was a light-skinned black man with a tattoo on his neck. (Jordan, by the way, wore a turtleneck to court.)

As with Rincon last week, High did not name either Washington or Jordan as the alleged shooters until more than a decade had passed. Her reason for withholding the information from law enforcement was the same as Rincon's: “I was afraid.” He said he moved to another city within a year or two of Mizell's murder.

Attorney Mark DeMarco, who is defending Jordan, focused his cross-examination on why she met with law enforcement several times without identifying the shooter. She said her initial description of the shooter was a 6’2″, heavyset man wearing a ski mask and dark clothing, a description that did not appear to match any of the defendants. He admitted to withholding the information. While answering the lawyer's questions, she was often emotional, pausing before giving detailed answers. Throughout the interrogation, none of the accused appeared to make eye contact with the witness.

Cross-examination continued later with Washington attorney Susan Kelman questioning High. The attorney showed photos from the studio to the witness and the court, prompting High to tear up. He was able to verify that it was a photo of the studio but not much else. the image he saw where Mizell had been shot. Kelman showed more photos, which got similar reactions, and eventually Judge LeShann DeArcy Hall called a sidebar and they had to continue with a floor plan of the studio, including the door Washington allegedly blocked.

“I was frantic … and shocked,” Hai said, crying. “I just jumped up.” When Kelman asked if anyone else was in the studio, High appeared to stumble over her testimony, saying, “Yes, no, yes, no … I saw someone else,” before mentioning Washington again.

When Kelman began asking about Washington's alleged role in the shooting, closing the door, saying he was not involved, High exclaimed, “Why would you close the door?” Judge DeArcy Hall blocked her from continuing. McConnell responded to this by confirming that Washington allegedly pointed a gun at High.

Earlier Monday, another witness, described by U.S. attorneys as “unruly,” testified about another aspect of the case against the defendants. Ralph Mullgrav, a masked and winter jacket-wearing ex-drug dealer, gave sharp answers to both prosecutors and defense attorneys about his role in a scheme to sell “a few keys” of cocaine in Baltimore, where he lived.

“[Jason and I] he had a deal with some cocaine,” he said. “He was asking me to move it for him.” (Part of prosecutors' case against the defendants is their allegation that Mizell served as a middleman in cocaine trafficking; the government claims that Washington and Jordan wanted in on the deal.)

Mullgrav's problem with the deal was that it would involve “a guy I grew up with named Tinard,” so, “I said [Jason] no.” The witness recalled seeing a car pull up one day, recognizing Washington and reacting by running to grab a gun he had hidden in a tire of a car parked nearby. What was his intention? “To shoot [Washington].” Of Washington, Mullgrav said, “It was a problem,” and that Mizell spent most of the day trying to convince him to include Washington in the deal. “Jay was not a drug dealer,” Mulgrave told the jury. “He used it to get by now and then.”

The third witness to testify Monday was Derrick Parker, the self-proclaimed “hip hop cop” who wrote the memoir, The Notorious COP Parker, who has a beard and worked on the cases of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious BIG (reports to which defense attorneys objected), testified that he provided security for High during the year following Mizell's murder. It was DJ Eric B. who called him and asked him to get involved.

During her time with High, Parker recalled that she seemed “very nervous and very anxious” as she went shopping and on other trips. he also went with her to Mizell's funeral. He provided his services for free.

He told jurors he saw her receive a call at one point from someone she later told him was “Big D,” the father of defendant Jordan. Without the jury present, the judge advised prosecutors not to mention that it upset her, and on cross-examination, DeMarco confirmed with Parker that he couldn't know who called High since he wasn't on the call. DeMarco also claimed Parker got involved with High so he could use her story to make money, which he denied.

The trial began last week with opening statements from prosecutors detailing Mizell's role in trafficking cocaine. They claimed that when Mizell cut Washington out of the deal, he and Jordan, who both stood to make a lot of money from a potential deal, decided to kill Mizell. US attorneys described a situation in which another man, Jay Bryant, who will stand trial in the future, let them into the recording studio where Mizell was and shot him, leaving the fire department from the back.

Defense lawyers for Washington and Jordan argue that their clients are not the killers and that the witnesses' memories are unreliable after more than two decades. They also suggested that some witnesses may have entered into cooperation agreements for lighter sentences.